This resource contains tools around specific design methods and techniques, including facilitation, ideation, and synthesis. Some contain step-by-step guidance and guidance on the method while others are standalone canvases/worksheets.
Good For: Insight finding
This resource distills the United Nations Development Programme's experience and lessons with running Social Innovation Camps into a "how-to" manual for others. The publisher intends it to broaden a project's results, attract donors, find new partners, source new perspectives on an issue, and/or place beneficiaries at the centre of project design. The resource was created within an international development and social innovation context but can be adapted for public sector use.
It is available…
This resource contains a framework and guidance regarding the use of user-centred design. The publisher defines the UCD process in six phases - two planning and four delivery phases. The two planning phases focus on typical project planning aspects such as problem space, resources, agency readiness, team logistics, governance, etc. The four delivery phases are about action, talking to users to understand their real needs, prototyping potential solutions, and building the minimum viable product…
Kickbox is an innovation process that Adobe developed for its own use and then open-sourced so everyone can use it. It is both a process for individuals and a system for deploying that process across an organization at scale. It’s designed to increase innovator effectiveness, accelerate innovation velocity, and measurably improve innovation outcomes. It can also optimize innovation investments by reducing costs compared to traditional approaches. Adobe distributed 1000 physical boxes…
The toolkit includes 5 methods for designing a more inclusive lab. The toolkit begins by guiding users through basic user observation, identification, and categorization processes (observation, interviews,
and personas). It then moves into problem definition and stakeholder prioritization, and finally defines a concrete suggestion for increased
diverse stakeholder governance. It includes templates and examples for each method.
A collection of tools created during the Open Data Innovation Week, which was a gathering of innovators from across the Asia-Pacific region to build a box of tools and methods for improving the design, practice and implementation of open data initiatives to help solve the region’s key political, economic, and social problems. Tools range from ethnography to mapping and analysis. Each tool contains instructions: purpose, prerequisites, who to involve, difficulty, time-frame, and step-by-step…
This is a report produced in conjunction with IDEO after a 2-year initiative of the Rockefeller Foundation called Paper Prototyping, an effort to better inform investment decisions of the Foundation. While this resource is not a typical innovation toolkit, it was included because it describes an often implicit and invisible process of developing and testing proposals for innovative solutions to complex problems.
This Field Guide is a systems take on typical design thinking methodology. It demonstrates how to design something with a greater emphasis on creativity and humour. The Guide goes through a systemic design project from concept to implementation. It takes you through the workshop planning process, and discusses workshop roles and client relations. In the FAQs, you’ll find explanations to some commonly asked questions about systemic design concepts to help you introduce others to SD and bring…
An introduction to service design for public servants, and a set of practical ways to include design methods in your work. This resource was developed for the City of New York but is relevant to other cities, governments, and innovation labs as well.
Guide to service blueprinting. The reader analyses their own interaction with service users. Through the tools of personas, scenarios, and the decomposition of a scenario into a blueprint of its elements, the reader can understand and improve their services from a Human-Centred design person